Items & Inventory

Each Item will have it's own, unique identifier called "Item Number" (this is actually an alphanumeric field and can include letters, numbers, spaces and some special characters)

Items will be set to either "Make" (an item you manufacture/make yourself), "Buy" (items you purchase from a Vendor), "MakeOrBuy" (both) or "Customer Supplied" (for items that a customer supplies to you in order for you to make a product for them)

Note: Customer Supplied items cannot be currently kept in inventory but only work on a job-by-job basis.

Creating New Items

To create a new Item

Browse to the 'Items & Inventory' page:

2. Click the 'New Item' button in the upper right-hand of the screen

3. From the pop-up menu enter a unique 'Item Number' (this can be alphanumeric)

4. Set the Item origin ("Make", "MakeOrBuy", "Buy", "Customer Supplied")

5. Click the "Create Item" button

Note: Descriptions are important since the text in them will be searchable as you

Copying an Item

You may want to use an Item as the initial starting-point for a new Item or you may need multiple similar variations of one Item.

Note: when you copy an Item to create a new variation you are copying a point-in-time. If you make any updates to the original they will not automatically update the copied Item details.

From an item click the 'down' arrow on the "Save" button
Select "Copy"
Enter a new 'Item Number' (remember, these need to be unique for each new item or variation)
Enter other details
Click the 'Copy Item' button

This will create a new copy of your Item.

What gets copied?

When you copy an item Fulcrum will copy:

BOM and Routing - you may need to make changes once this has been copied. Any changes you make to the original Item's BOM will not automatically copy to the new Item (there is no "master/slave" or "parent/child" concept in BOMs in Fulcrum)
Purchasing information - if this is a "Buy" item, the vendor details from the original Item will copy. This includes the Vendor barcode, Item Number, description, etc. This may also need to be updated if the new Item

Managing Items

Use the Item details page to manage properties (dimensions, minimum production and "on hand" numbers), inventory, purchasing details, production BOMs, etc

Important Onboarding Notes about Items

During onboarding into Fulcrum you will have the opportunity to fill out spreadsheets that represent all of your various items and their details. At this point in the process you may be eager to just get into the software as quickly as possible... don't rush!

You will want to be sure to have your item details filled in before uploading. Especially details like "Primary Vendor", cost per item, vendor "units of measure", etc. will be more easily entered in your bulk-upload during onboarding.

Impact: Having initial inventory value correctly set will allow you to trust the number on "cost of materials" for BOMs that will utilize that item. If you simply enter Item counts into inventory and think that you will add cost/value later, it is difficult to do and will require manually "removing" items from inventory and then "adding" them back in (with appropriate, per-item value).

Common Item Bugs

Name Locked - after you have created an Item its name (Item Number) may become locked so that you cannot edit it. It's unclear why this will happen but if it does you can ofter toggle the "buy" and "make" buttons or toggle the Item to "Draft" and the name will become editable.

Tags - These theoretically allow you to link different Items together... however, there is currently no way to click on a Tag and see all other Items with that tag. Also, for some reason, tags have to be pre-defined. You first need to go into Business Setup > System Data > General > Tags. From this menu you can create new tags, color code them and attach them to specific content types (Items, Items Shapes, Refund Codes, etc) but you cannot create a new tag from within an Item (even though it looks like you can --- perhaps this is a feature that is being worked on).

Negative Inventory - We will write about this more under Jobs and under Inventory but for some reason it is possible to have an item listed as having negative inventory.

BOMs

How BOMs Work

An Item's Bill of Materials (BOM) is the list of all components that go into the manufacture of that item. Each sub-component must already be created in your system and should be referenced by its unique "Item Number". The BOM also identifies the quantity of the component that the manufactured item will consume. This may be whole numbers or fractional numbers.

There is currently no way in Fulcrum to divide a raw-material into multiple fractional BOMs (in other words, if you have one sheet of material that yields 5 of part A and 10 of part B, there is no way to specify; each part would either just consume a fraction of the original material or you would need to create a completely separate operational series to break up the original material).

Units Required vs Units Created

What's the difference? Units Required simply means how many of that item/material will be used to create one of the item that the BOM belongs to.

Units Created is the inverse, it's just the opposite way of looking at that same consumption. How many of the units for the BOM will the material/item used create? If each item in the BOM consumes 1/4 of the material you can either say that: Units Required = 0.25 or Units Created = 4 (these are the same thing).

Duplicate Items in BOMs

You may need to use the same component/material in different quantities in different steps of your BOM. If you are listing these in routing steps you can specify the quantity you need for each step. Otherwise you can track the total amount needed for the entire BOM by just listing the material in the "Edit Items" list.

Updating BOM Items

Currently in Fulcrum if you modify an Item's details, any BOM that uses that Item will automatically pull the most recent version of the details. However, there are two issues you may run into.

Already Created Jobs - If you have created a job (even if it is not yet approved or running) and you update the BOM from the main Items section, the Job will not update. The only way to update the job is by manually duplicating your updates to the BOM listed in the Job.

TIP: Update from the Job --- if you do need to update a BOM and currently have a Job created for that Item, update the BOM from within the Job. In the Job page you will have the option to "Update Parent"; this will save your BOM changes up to the main ("Parent") item for any future use.

Updating Items - This is the most frustrating one: if you want to swap-out one item for another (you started using a different raw-material, etc) the only way to do that is to go item-by-item, BOM-by-BOM through the Items that consumer that material and update each of them manually. There is currently no "search and replace" and since when (as mentioned above) the item is referenced in a specific routing step you must first remove it from that step then also remove it from the Item's List then make sure you hit the final "Save" to actually remove it. Lots and lots of clicks. (Hopefully a "find and replace" feature will come soon).

There is a good "Usage" toggle on the main "Details" page of your Item to see what other Items are currently consuming it in their BOM:

"Usage" toggle on Item Details tab/page

Debugging BOMs

One of the bugs that you may encounter in editing/updating a BOM is when an item is being called-for in a specific routing step. If you try to remove the item from the "Edit Items" list in the Production tab, the item will continue to appear...even after being deleted.

First you must click on the routing steps (your listed operations), this will bring up the Operations window. From here you can find the item listed under one of your routing steps... remove it.

Now hit "Save" and you will see that the item is still in your Items list.

However, now you can click on "Edit Items" and remove the Item for real.

REMEMBER: You always have to hit "Save" on the top of the screen to save actually save (regardless of how many other "Save" buttons you may have pressed)

Inventory

The quantity of items you have on hand.

Initial Setup

The initial setup of your inventory is actually really important.

Note: Make sure you have cost/purchase value associated with every item so that any BOM that consumes that item will have correct "material value" calculations.

Initial Add

When you first create an Item you will want to add your initial inventory. Use the "Add" button, enter the quantity and the value per item. This will set the value for any BOM that may consume this Item.

Edit/Update

Inventory numbers can be updated either from the main Items list or from the specific Item details page/tab.

Locations

You can set the location of your inventory. This is especially helpful if you store overstock in separate locations or need to retrieve inventory from a warehouse or storage location.

Negative inventory - one risk of using multiple locations is that Fulcrum will not automatically deduct items from a location where there is stock available if you overdraw another location.

Stock Take

The Stock Take tool allows you to download a simple spreadsheet of inventory as it stands in Fulcrum today, update the counts as necessary, and upload the revisions back into Fulcrum. The process is quick, clear, and ensures that what you see in the system perfectly matches what you've got in inventory.

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